TLRH | Role of Dublin Workhouse Officials in Preventing and Contributing to Institutional Mortality

Wednesday, 6 April 2022, 12:30 – 1:30pm ‘“They attached no blame to
the staff in charge”: The Role of Dublin Workhouse Officials in
Preventing and Contributing to Institutional Mortality, 1872-1913’
a seminar by Shelby Zimmerman (TCD) as part of the Medical and
Health Humanities Lunchtime Seminar Series in association with
Trinity Long Room Hub. The Trinity College Dublin Medical and
Health Humanities Initiative brings together researchers from a
wide range of disciplines including history, philosophy, sociology,
drama, health sciences, religion, cultural studies, arts,
literature and languages. Medical and health humanities seeks to
provide insights into the cultural and social contexts within which
diverse but interrelated concerns such as the human condition, the
individual experience of illness and suffering, and the way
medicine is (or was) practiced, might be understood. The Trinity
College Dublin Medical and Health Humanities initiative seeks to
cultivate a richer understanding of the interactions and synergies
between practices and discourses of wellness, health or medicine
and the arts, humanities or culture through interdisciplinary
research and education. During the Great Famine from 1845 to 1852,
the Irish workhouse was associated in the public consciousness with
dying and the mistreatment of the dead. By the end of the
nineteenth century, the role of the workhouse shifted from poor
relief to medical relief and thus became the largest and most
accessible medical institution for the poor. Despite the
workhouse’s newfound status as a medical institution, it was still
plagued by the reputation of its Famine counterpart. Through an
analysis of the North and South Dublin Unions, this paper will
examine whether that stigma was warranted in post-Famine Dublin. It
will look at the treatment of inmates to ascertain whether the
Board of Guardians and medical officers were complicit in mortality
rates. It will analyse ward management and staffing to determine
whether negligence was inherent or a reflection on the medical
officers. This paper will also examine how the Guardians responded
to infectious disease and whether it revealed different attitudes
towards different classes of inmates. Ultimately, this paper will
determine if workhouse staff sought to reduce institutional
mortality or contributed to the workhouse’s stigma. Speaker
Biography Shelby Zimmerman is a PhD candidate at Trinity College
Dublin studying the medicalisation of death in the Dublin city
workhouses from 1872 to 1920 centring on the role the workhouse
played in Dublin's medical landscape for the sick and dying poor.
She is primarily interested in the history of medicine,
institutions, the Irish Poor Law, poverty, and death. She received
her BS in History and Museum Studies from Towson University in
Maryland and her MPhil with Distinction from Trinity College Dublin
in Modern Irish History. Shelby is an Early Career Researcher in
the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute.
She is also the co-curator of the Little Museum of Dublin’s
upcoming exhibition on Victorian medicine. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/